Wednesday, July 15, 2009

A Good Idea At The Time?

I've been thinking about the idea of summary justice. Yesterday Chris Grayling announced that he favoured police officers having the power to temporarily confiscate a young thug's mobile phone to encourage them to behave. It was described as the 21st century equivalent of a clip round the ear. I'm not so sure. Apart from the authoritarian overtones of this measure, could it not lead to an increase in crime, as those who have had their phones confiscated would just go and steal a new one?

We have legal process for a purpose. Summary justice can be a very dangerous thing, especially when it relates to acts of violence or vandalism. Aren't there echoes of Tony Blair's suggestion of marching youngsters to cashpoints if they couldn't pay an on the spot fine? It seems like a good idea until you think about it.

I'm all in favour of new approaches to youth criminality but I actually don't think this idea is a very Conservative one.

33 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Morning Iain, re Mobile Phones, they should be seized from people using them while driving as, after all, they are the evidence, that'll teach them.Freedom to ProsperPS Can you imagine the Mirror's headlines if these unemployment figures had come out under Thatcher?

I somehow fear that this sort of policy is going to fall foul of the Human Rights mafia.

The problem is, that we all know our rights but not our responsibilities. Why? because of the insidious effects of half a century of social welfarism and socialist re-engineering that has cast the population as supplicants to an uncaring and rotten state parent, from early schooling to dole queue.

It will take a generation or two to instill good manners and consideration for others, i.e. discipline, and will require quite a revolution of change.

Taking away phones and bikes and other goodies will only result in resentment and potentially a rather severe backlash, as someone, somewhere says bollocks and lunges with his pocket knife or something larger.

The efforts to change needs to start at the grass roots with a fundamental change of how teachers operate and their powers to enforce discipline.

Not only is this not a very Conservative idea it isn't a very good one either. There are many potential issues with it not least being empowering individual police officers to dispense summary justice involving no judicial process but allowing the confiscation of private property that would probably have had nothing to do with the perceived offence.

Chris Grayling is normally a hell of a lot better than this so I'll just view this particular bad idea as a minor aberation and trust that he will swiftly regain his normal level head.

If a crime involving the use of said mobile phone has been committed then it should be taken as evidence of that crime.

However the police should not have the power to deal out "summary justice" to anyone. That is what the court system is for.

In my opinion, giving out "on the spot fines" is going too far for the police, so no, I don't think that it is a good idea.

What would be better would be to set up the criminal equivalent of a "small claims court" to deal with "petty" crime, or even to expand the magistrates service and put these things through there - but it would need serious expansion to avoid "gridlock".

Firstly. A very happy birthday Ian. Hope you enjoy it.Re: Mobiles. I can't agree with taking them. The plods have far too much power as it is. We should be limiting their powers of arrest and seizures. Not a happy bunny about this one. Not happy at all!

We recently gave powers to PCSOs and police to confiscate alcohol using summary powers. And what happened? Widespread abuse: in effect, PCSOs decided to ignore Home Office guidelines and impose prohibition.

We have due process for a reason. I'd rather we just accepted that rather than re-learn every generation why the 1689 Bill of Rights was a necessary thing.

C'mon. You know this is one of the daftest (most desperate?) notions you've heard for some long time. But what more can be expected from ex-SDP defectors? Especially those with a tough street-wise upbringing in the glug-glug glory days of commercial TV? Another one of the on-the-make, on-the-take expenses merchants.

Grayling isn't up to the job. Nor was Grieve. Davis most definitely was. Says a lot about the "talent" in the Tory team. Correction there: in the third-tier in any of the political parties (OK, OK: yeah, yeah: in UKIP the "culture-sag" starts at the top).

Grayling's an idiot. Summary justice is exactly not what he should be advocating. He's fallen into the trap of providing ill-considered knee-jerk response to perceived problems.

Frankly I'm appalled that he even considers this to be a sensible approach. What does he want to do - emasculate the 'justice system' in exactly the same way as the NuLab apparatchiks? There's far, far too much in the way of giving the police judicial powers already.

What he should be doing is promising more money to the Magistracy and, in particular, to supporting the hard pressed Magistrates Courts. Under Labour many of these buildings are being abandoned - with nothing replacing them. Maybe Grayling should take a look at Bystander's Blog: http://thelawwestofealingbroadway.blogspot.com/. It's pretty educational.

I agree with the general thrust of responses above. Summary justice is a terrible idea; the police need fewer powers that work, not more powers that don't; and the problem of thuggishness/larrikinism has far more to do with easy availability of alcohol, absentee or indifferent parents and the breakdown of discipline in schools.

I don't have any easy solutions, but I know a terrible idea when I see one.

I would prefer that the police did actually 'box the ears' of the little thugs. Perhaps we could allow teachers to issue the cane as a punishment for misbehaving pupils. I know these radical ideas will be poo-pood by our lovey brigade, but they might just help our horrible society of benefit dependant chav's and immigrants that cause 90% of all crime. Here's another idea, abolish child benefit for all! Oh another, reduce tax credits so people want to work. GOD I'M GOOD. and don't mention child poverty in the UK..OR ELSE!

This is an interesting one, generally i am against giving more powers to the police but the only punishment which seems to work with my 15yr old is to confiscate the mobile phone. It goes everwhere with her. Even if there is no credit or the battery is flat, it is in her hand or her pocket. On those occasions we do confiscate it temporarily we allow her to remove the SIM so she can be sure we cannot access her messages etc.

In this age, what will happen is an officer will confiscate say a mobile from and Asian or an African youth.

Because of this pc age and afraid of being accused of racially motivated targetting, the police officer will seek a white youth and on the flimsiest pretext, confiscate his/her mobile. After all that's what they're doing in stop and search

Forfeiture orders are generally a good idea in principle, but unfortunately summary justice is often arbitrary and inconsistent so overall unjust. Even when imposed judicially proportionality can be a problem. Seizing the bike of an estate kid is one thing but seizing the bike of a country lad who needs it to get to school 5 miles away might be another. The offence might be the same but the impact of the punishment quite different and its no answer that they should have thought about that before they did the deed.

The fact is that the ostensibly low level anti social behaviours at which this type of proposal is aimed are only at the thin end of the wedge. The underclass affected are already contemptuous of authority, the police, the law generally, their own parents, etc.

Education is the only answer. How that is delivered is the real problem.

Err...you could just bring back the clip round the ear and let them keep their phones. As a way of dealing with minor delinquency, it was cheap, cost effective and, in the long run, a lot less damaging to the miscreant youth than any of the alternatives.